Books

(NY): Grove Press. (1959)[1962]. The first American edition of this classic novel of the Beat generation, which was not published in the U.S. until three years after its Paris publication, and until a legal challenge to its banning was successful. Such authors as Norman Mailer testified as to the literary value and accomplishment of Burroughs' work. Basis for the 1991 David Cronenberg film featuring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider. Inscribed by the author in 1984 for Bob Jackson. Fine in a near fine dust jacket but for creasing and a couple small chips along the top edge. A very nice copy in the original, pre-zip code, dust jacket. The first printing of the U.S. edition was only 3500 copies -- smaller even than the original Olympia Press paperback in Paris, which had a 5000-copy first printing. Unless otherwise noted, our first editions are first printings. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine.

The Naked Lunch (sometimes referred to as Naked Lunch) is a novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, following the shifting and hallucinatory perspectives of a junkie protagonist.